1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wireless remote controller for transmitting a control signal to control target equipment to operate the control target equipment, a wireless remote control method and an air conditioner having an indoor unit which can be remotely operated on the basis of a control signal transmitted from a wireless remote controller.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various types of air conditioners have been known and practically used, and as one of these air conditioners is known a ceiling embedded type air conditioner in which an indoor unit is set up in a room of a building while embedded in the ceiling of the room.
There are practically used some ceiling embedded type air conditioners in which not only fundamental operations such as the start/stop operation of the indoor units, etc., but also the elevating (upwardly/downwardly moving) operation of grilles of the indoor units are carried out on the basis of control signals transmitted from a single wireless remote controller or plural wireless remote controllers.
The grille of the indoor unit is mounted at the front side of the indoor unit, and is provided with an air suction port through which room air is sucked into the indoor unit. Further, a filter for filtering the sucked room air to remove dust, etc. is further mounted on the grille so as to confront the air suction port. Accordingly, when the filter is cleaned or exchanged by a new one, the grille is downwardly moved by using a wireless remote controller.
FIG. 1 shows an air conditioner having plural indoor units 101A, 101B, 101C which are mounted in the same room and operated by using corresponding wireless remote controllers 102A, 102B, 102C, respectively. That is, the indoor units 101A, 101B, 101C and the wireless remote controllers 102A, 102B, 102C are connected with one another in one-to-one correspondence. Particularly, FIG. 1 shows a case where a fundamental (normal) operation is carried out on the basis of a control signal transmitted from the wireless remote controller 102A.
In general, the same address is set to each indoor unit 101A (101B, 101C) and the corresponding wireless remote controller 102A (102B, 102C). Therefore, only when the address is coincident between the indoor unit 101A, 101B, 101C and the wireless remote controller 102A, 102B, 102C, the indoor unit 101A, 101B, 101C accepts the control signals from the wireless remote controller 102A, 102B, 102C. This is because an indoor unit (101A, 101B, 101C) which is not expected to be operated is carelessly operated on the basis of a control signal from a wireless remote controller (102A, 102B, 102C) which is not connected to the indoor unit.
In the case of FIG. 1, the control signal transmitted from the wireless remote controller 102A is addressed to the indoor unit 101A, and the indoor unit 101A accepts the control signal from the wireless remote controller 102A because the address contained in the control signal is coincident with the address registered therein. However, the indoor units 101B and 101C do not accept the control signal from the wireless remote controller 101A because the address of the control signal is not coincident with the addresses registered therein.
The one-to-one control operation of the indoor units 101A, 101B, 101C by the wireless remote controllers 102A, 102B, 102C as described above (hereinafter referred to as “one-to-one control operation”) is applied to not only the fundamental (normal) operations such as the start/stop operation, etc. of the indoor units 101A, 101B, 101C, but also the elevating operation of grilles 103A, 103B, 103C of the indoor units 101A, 101B, 101C.
FIG. 2 shows a case where the grille elevating operation of the indoor unit 101A is carried out on the basis of a control signal from the wireless remote controller 101A.
In this case, in order to move any one of the grilles 103A, 103B, 103C of the indoor units 101A, 101B, 101C upwardly/downwardly, the corresponding wireless remote controller whose address is coincident with the address of the indoor unit of the grille to be upwardly/downwardly moved (hereinafter referred to as “control target unit”) must be used, and the remote control operation is more cumbersome. Furthermore, as the number of indoor units is increased, the number of wireless remote controllers is also increased in proportion to the increase of the number of the indoor units. Therefore, it needs some labor to find out the wireless remote controller corresponding to the control target unit even when the grille elevating operation which is a simple operation common to all the indoor units is carried out.
In place of the one-to-one operation for the grille elevating operation as described above may be considered a method of controlling the grille elevating operation of all the indoor units by using a single wireless remote controller. In this case, the control signal for elevating each of the grilles 103A, 103B, 103C must be successively transmitted to each of the indoor units 101A, 101B, 101C while the address set in the single wireless remote controller (for example, wireless remote controller 102A) is successively changed. However, in this case, it is required to successively change and set the address of the wireless remote controller 102a, and thus the operation of the indoor units 101A, 101B, 101C is more cumbersome.
Besides, it may be considered that the address connecting relationship between each of the indoor units and each of the wireless remote controllers is released (i.e., the connecting relationship is set to an address-free state) only when the grille elevating operation is carried out on each of the indoor units as shown in FIG. 3. However, in this case, there may occur such an unintentional case that the control signal emitted from the wireless remote controller 102A which is addressed to the indoor unit 101B is transmitted to not only the addressed indoor unit 101B, but also non-addressed indoor units 101A and 101C, so that not only the grille 103B of the indoor unit 101B which is expected to be elevated, but also the grille 103A of the indoor unit 101A and the grille 103C of the indoor unit 101C which are not expected to be elevated are elevated (upwardly or downwardly) because the indoor units 101A, 101B and 101C have excellent receiver sensitivity.